Free Rise of the Seventh Moon: Heirs of Ash, Book 3 by Rich Wulf Page B

occasionally refreshed the library’s maintenance spells. By the coating of dust on the bookcases here, even they were apparently infrequent visitors. She was forced to navigate with her own light, summoning a radiance from one of her rings with a whisper.
    She found what she sought on a top shelf tucked in a far corner, next to a thin window that, if not for the grime, would have afforded an excellent view of the plateau. It was a thick volume, emblazoned with crudely scrawled Draconic runes. She took the book to a dusty chair and sat, using her ring for illumination as she turned the pages.
    From what she could glean at a quick glance, the book had been written nearly a century ago. The author was an explorer who ventured into Argonnessen at the behest of Sannis ir’Morgrave, then master of the university. Morien had been the expedition’s only survivor. The book was written in a mad hodgepodge of the common tongue, Elven, and roughly sketched Draconic runes, in a cramped, tilted hand as if the writer was in a great hurry or a little mad. It almost reminded her of Petra’s crazed shorthand,though it was more legible. Norra sighed. Trying to decipher this would be a chore.
    Yet as she turned the pages, something bothered her. It was like a flash of movement in the corner of the eye, something seen but not quite seen. Something was out of place. She studied the pages intently, turning back and forth, trying to find what she had glimpsed.
    And there it was—a rune hidden among the Draconic scrawl that was not truly Draconic, but something else. It was the sort of symbol often used to mark magical creations with words of command. Even a trained eye might not notice it—Norra nearly hadn’t. Surely it wasn’t part of Morien Markhelm’s original text. Norra focused her senses upon the symbol. There was magic here. She let her fingertips brush the symbol and read the word of command aloud.
    She felt a sense of nausea as the room shifted. She found that she was standing in the center of a darkened study. A map of Khorvaire was drawn upon the floor. She recognized the room as one of the university’s lower-level private studies. When Morgrave University was first built more than two centuries ago, this study’s marble floor was inlaid with a beautifully crafted map of the world. For whatever reason, the artist had left the map bare of all names and national borders. In recent decades, the students had begun to use the map to monitor the tides of the Last War. They added names and boundaries in colored chalk to the continent of Khorvaire, correcting them as they changed, adding names as nations arose from the fortunes of war. It looked like their work had been erased and redrawn of late, so often that the tiles were beginning to wear.
    But something didn’t look right. Norra knelt and studied the floor. This was not a recent map. By the state of the borders, it seemed to illustrate the state of the Last War years ago, roughlythe same time Ashrem had come to study here.
    She felt another shift in her surroundings. Suddenly a man stood beside her. He was thin, almost gaunt. His features, once fine, were now pale and sallow. His shoulders slumped in his loose tan robes. He looked as if he had been handsome, perhaps in his youth, but time and stress had worn on him. His dark hair and thin beard were shot with gray. His eyes were haunted as he stared at his feet, concentrating on the scribbled borders of Cyre. He wrung his hands within his sleeves.
    Norra drew away quickly, but he didn’t notice her at all. It took her several seconds to realize that she recognized him. It was Ashrem, as he looked many years ago. She looked from Ashrem to the map again. This was some sort of illusion—a reflection of the past.
    In the shadows between the bookcases, something moved.
    “Who is there?” Ashrem demanded. “I told your headmaster I preferred to use these chambers for private study.”
    “And the headmaster has respected your